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A little more than one year ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last given the official approval as Formula One’s latest participant for the 2026 season. Constructing the squad from scratch has required a hectic operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One converges on Vegas this race weekend, the team know time is getting tight.

The Tight Timeline to Melbourne

At the final race of the season to be staged in the US, with around a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are conscious there will not be sufficient time.

The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent team in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core since then and enjoys a knowing grin when reflecting on the journey.

“You might get five minutes reflecting at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “But then the following moment you realize: ‘Yes, we still have a great deal to do.’”

A Unique Opportunity

The CTO enjoyed success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning years of 2005/2006 and was in charge of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the challenge of launching the iconic American Cadillac marque, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the owner, General Motors, into Formula One.

“Establishing an Formula One team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you rarely get the opportunity to alter cultural approach.”

With each day that passes focus are sharper on the looming decisive point in Melbourne and targets are being set realistically.

“You have to assume that any incoming team entering the sport is probably going to finish last but merely participating will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented this year and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he felt the organization had a statement to make as well.

“The first thing we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “So that we arrive and we operate well. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation executing the right things on the race track. Once we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we want to show forward movement from there on.”

Racing Talent and Team Building Drive

In the summer they contracted Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a tandem remarkable for their invaluable experience in operating at the front in two top-tier teams, Red Bull and the Mercedes team, and Bottas expressed the sentiment of fighting spirit.

“Certainly, we’re realistic,” Bottas stated. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and we expect almost certainly a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to stay at the back. I believe with this setup, with this team, these people, there is every reason that we can't manage to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and taste victory.”

To that end hiring has been in full swing, with employees now up to over 400 and scheduled to hit the objective of 600 quickly. Alongside their existing facility at the UK base, the squad are in the phase of building an headquarters at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are developing the facility to produce the power unit, set for 2029 – for now they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a intricate organization, contrary to the direction in Formula One for more centralization, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester referred to.

Space Mission Blueprint

“We've drawn heavily from the NASA moon mission,” stated Graeme Lowdon shortly before the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how difficult it is. The deadlines, are incredibly tight. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”

So they have adopted, rather than the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all tackling different aspects of the mission at a different facilities.

“When you must follow a process where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their team leader, that supervisor consults a supervisor somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” says Nick Chester. “So we empower people to handle things directly. Avoiding hierarchical consent for everything is far more efficient and faster.”

The Future

The efficacy of this nimble methodology will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is no little amount on the line for the sport, too. Cadillac have signed as their reserve driver the young American Colton Herta